Select Passages from the Writings of St. Justin Popovich

Select Passages from the Writings of St. Justin Popovich

from the Prologue to The Orthodox Philosophy of Truth: The Dogmatics of the Orthodox Church, Book 1, Belgrade, 1932, 9,11

The philosophy of the Holy Spirit is at the same time the creative power which, by “becoming like God” through the road of ascetic-charismatic perfection, multiplies within man the divine wisdom about God, the world and man. This character of Orthodox Philosophy is emphasized by St. John of Damascus when he says: “Philosophy is to be like God” and therefore is “the art of arts and the science of sciences.” As a source of life, the philosophy of the Holy Spirit is the only art which has the manifold possibilities to fashion a God-like and Christ-like personality, and is the only science which can teach the selfish and mortal man how to overcome death and obtain immortality. Therefore, the Orthodox philosophy is the art of arts and the science of sciences. The mystery of Truth does not lie in things, ideas, and symbols, but in a person and this person is the Threanthropic Person, the Lord Jesus Christ. That is why the Lord said: “I am the Truth”, a Truth all-perfect, always undiminished and unchanged, always one and the same in its perfect fullness, always one and the same “yesterday, today and forever.” (Heb. 13:8).

from St. Justin’s book, Dostoevsky on Europe and the Slavs, Belgrade, 1940

Only one road leads to the knowledge of Truth - Love.  Obtaining love, which is God Himself, man is truly uniting himself with God and in this way is coming closer to real knowledge of Eternal Truth. Love fills man with God. In proportion to the measure of his self to God, man knows God. Filled by God, man is illuminated, sanctified, deified, and in this way reaches true knowledge of God with the acceptance and practice of the “first and great commandment” (Mt.22:37-38). The divine energy of love introduces the entire man to the way of deification: it deifies the heart, the soul, the will and everything else which is human; he lives through God, feels through God, thinks through God, hopes through God. Besides this, the mystery of God reveals the Holy Spirit to man, because “the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.”(1Cor.2:11) The Holy Spirit is “the spirit of love” and “the Spirit of wisdom and of prudence,” namely, the Spirit of knowledge.

The God-man made love the essence and the method of the knowledge of God and of the knowledge of man. This is the main creative power of which the New Testament is composed. The mystery of the marvelous Person of Christ lies within love. The mystery of evangelical gnoseology is found in Love. Theanthropic(God-human) Love is the road to knowledge. Its imperative command is: love in order to know. The true knowledge of everything depends on Love, is born within Love, grows through Love, and arrives at perfection through Love. I love, therefore I know. Knowledge is the result of Love. The entire philosophy of knowledge is contained within the entire philosophy of Love. Only if man loves with a Christ-like Love is he a true philosopher, and only then does he know the mystery of life and of the world. Through Love, God is God, as through Love, man is man.

from St. Justin’s, Philosophical Abysses, Munich, 1957

According to the teaching of the Orthodox faith, within the Church of the God-man, this is the most important and supreme ideal: to find the Person of God within man. Just as you discover it in man, you discover His eternal value, His uniqueness, His immortality, and His eternity. Often however, the divine image in man is covered with the filth of pleasure, the thorns of passion, the weeds of sin, and the outer skin of malice. But you are an Orthodox Christian and you must remove all of these from the divine image in order to bring out the human person again in all of his divine beauty. When you behave in this way, you love man despite his sin. You will never identify sin, with the sinner, and evil with the criminal. You shall always separate the sin from the sinner, you shall condemn the sin, and you shall have mercy, pity, and compassion for the sinner just as the Lord had done for the sinful adulteress in the Gospel of John (8: 3-11). 

from St. Justin’s “The Mystery of the Personality of Metropolitan Anthony and His Meaning for Orthodox Slavdom” in Pravoslavle(Orthodoxy), No.! 1939 

Make no mistake about it, the blessedly reposed Metropolitan is an exceptional patristic phenomenon in our time. He passed through our stormy century fearlessly, like an apostle, and with evangelical meekness, just like the great Fathers of the Church, Athanasios, Basil, and Gregory passed through the fourth century.  Looking at him, I say to myself: yes, even now one can actually live in a patristic manner, even now one can be humble and fearless like the Fathers, even now one can actually be a bishop like the holy Fathers. Why is this so? Because the Lord Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and unto the ages; likewise, human nature remains the same from Adam until our own day. The Fathers of the Church are different from us not by nature, but by will. In order to imitate them, we must, according to the words of St. Seraphim of Sarov, possess two qualities: resolution and effort of will. That mystery, the mystery of Christ, completely permeates these evangelical heroes. It uninterruptedly flows through the apostolate of the apostles, through  the martyrdom of the martyrs, through the struggles of the ascetics. Even more must be said: it still flows continuously through the Orthodox Church, through its holiness, catholicity, apostolicity, and unity. This holy mystery has been successfully transmitted with exceptional force even through the patristic personality of the blessed Metropolitan Anthony. 

His entire being is rooted in the holy Fathers. Thence sprang his very touching love for the holy Fathers; he could not even speak of them without compunction and tears. Thus his personality, his life, his labors can also be explained through the holy Fathers. The holy Fathers are his parents, his teachers, his tutors, his guides. They taught him holiness, they inspired him to asceticism, they gave him a catholic sensitivity and an Orthodox consciousness. Tirelessly striving through patristic struggles, he transformed his own nature and habits into evangelical love, humility, meekness, and mercy. To realize the Gospel in one’s own nature - this is the very meaning of human existence in the world. In this the blessed Metropolitan is an irreplaceable teacher and guide. Finding through struggles evangelical co-suffering love for men, he lived by it and produced it in others. In this was his wondrous might and his miraculous power.

The mystery of the personality of Metropolitan Anthony is the mystery of all great monks. Here a  man renounces himself for the sake of Christ in order that , through Christ, he is again united with men. There is nothing more fearful for man than to confront himself and nothing is more unpleasant for man than to face other men; and nothing is more sorrowful for man than to come face to face with the world. Only when man accepts the Lord Christ as the mediator between himself and men, between himself and the world, and even between him and his very self, then his sorrow is transformed into joy, his despair into delight, and death into immortality; then the bitter mystery of the world is transformed into the sweet mystery of God. Thus, in the soul of man, there is created a powerful relationship not only toward God, but even a relationship toward much-suffering creation. Therefore, a man of Christ must be an inspired man of prayer Such was the blessed Metropolitan. Everywhere his relationship to God, to men and to the world was one of prayer.

From St. Justin’s “Humanistic and Theanthropic Education”

Therefore, only this one among the human race, namely, the God-man Christ, had the right to seek from men divine perfection ( Be perfect,therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matt. 5: 48) and to place divine perfection as the goal of life and as the goal of the whole endeavor of man. By doing this, He gives to men at the same time all the necessary means and all the necessary strength with which to realize this goal of obtaining divine perfection. What are these means? The holy Gospel-oriented virtues: faith and love, fasting and prayer, meekness and humility, compassion and goodness, hope and patience, truth and justice. Applying these virtues produces a holy man, namely, a perfect and complete man. Such a man knows the real meaning of the world and of life, and he lives with his whole being directed towards realizing his given purpose in the arena of human activity. Formed by the holy virtues, such a man draws unceasingly from the aorta of his existence all the immortal powers of the everlasting God-man. Thus, already in this life he feels immortal and eternal; for this reason, he sees in every man an immortal and eternal being. The evangelical virtues are the conduits of divine light; each one instills in man a beam of light. As a result of this the saint radiates, illuminates, and enlightens. He carries in himself "the light of the world"; this light illuminates the whole world so that he also might see its eternal meaning and eternal value. The light of the world is simultaneously "the light of life." It illuminates the road which leads to immortality and to eternal life. In our human world, light and life are synonymous as are darkness and death.

From St. Justin’s  “Reflections on the Infallibility of European Man” The American Srbobran, May 1969

All is new in the God-man and because of Him. He Himself is first, followed by salvation, the teaching regarding salvation, and the means of salvation. And the God-man's message for the human race is uniquely new: Let us separate sin from the sinner, let us hate sin but love the sinner, let us kill sin yet save the sinner. Do not equate the sinner with the sin. Do not put the sinner to death because of sin. Save him from sin! A striking example of this is the woman found entangled in adultery. The all-merciful Savior separated her sin from her existence in the image and likeness of God.

How does an Orthodox Christian feel in the presence of Christ, the God-man?

He feels totally and completely sinful. That is his feeling, his attitude, his manner, his mindset, his speech, his conscience, his confession, his entire being. That feeling of total personal sinfulness in the presence of the Most Sweet Lord is the soul of his soul and the heart of his heart. Briefly examine the prayers of repentance, the odes, the hymns, the stichera in the Paraclitike of Monday and even of Tuesday, and you will immediately verify that this sentiment constitutes a sacred duty and a prayerful reality for every Orthodox Christian without exception. This path has been explored by our immortal teachers, the Holy Fathers, who continuously direct us. Let us remember at least two of them, St. John Damascene and St. Symeon the New Theologian. Their saintliness, cherubic beyond any doubt. Their prayer is assuredly seraphic. Nevertheless, they themselves express a feeling and consciousness of utter personal sinfulness and simultaneously a deeply-felt attitude of repentance. That is the existential paradox in our Orthodox, evangelical, apostolic faith, and our humility in this faith.

Excerpts from “A Deer in a Lost Paradise: A Confession”

Note: To convey the catastrophic consequences of man’s fall and his continual sin against creation, St. Justin chose to make us poetically view man’s fallen state through the eyes of a gentle and harmless deer:

I am beside a stream, whose banks are adorned with blue flowers. And the stream is from my tears. Men wound me in the heart, and instead of blood, tears flow. O gentle heaven, to you I tell my secret: instead of blood I have tears in my heart. In this lies my life, in this my secret. Therefore, I weep for all the sorrowful, all the innocent, all the humiliated, all the insulted, all the hungry, all the homeless, all the distressed, all the tormented, all the saddened. My thoughts soon choke up with sorrow and turn into feelings, and the feelings pour out in tears. Yes, my feelings are boundless, and my tears are countless. And almost every feeling in me grieves and weeps, because as soon as  it turns from me to the world around me, it encounters some human cruelty. Oh is there any being more cruel and brutal than man?...

…More than all that, I love, I love my freedom. It consists of goodness, gentleness and love. And evil, cruelty and hatred - this is slavery of the worst sort. By being a slave to  them, one is a slave to death. And is there any slavery more fearful than death?  …I sorrow and I love. I sorrow through love, I love through sorrow. And can I really do otherwise in a world inhabited by men? My life lies in this framework…I am all heart, all eye, all sorrow, all love; therefore, I am shaken by fear, that deer fear, of which only a sorrowful deer knows…

Only those men who resemble Him are precious to us. They are our family, and our immortality and our love. The soul of these men is woven from His goodness and compassion and love and gentleness and meekness, and righteousness and wisdom. Their intelligence is divinely-wise, divinely good, divinely humble, divinely compassionate. And they resemble the radiant and holy angels.